Supreme Court mulls school integration

Matthew MacLean

In the latest episode of the nation’s long struggle with school segregation, the U.S. Supreme Court is now considering the constitutionality of racial balancing plans in the schools of Seattle and Louisville, KY — cases that may have far-reaching consequences for schools in the Bay State.

In arguments before the nation’s highest court in early December, the questions from some of the key justices left a strong impression that they oppose racial balancing. Though judicial questions sometime belie judicial intent, many civil rights attorneys said after the hearing that the clock is ticking even faster on race-based solutions to school desegregation problems.

The cases before the court are Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County [Louisville] Board of Education. In both cases, white parents claim their children were unconstitutionally barred from the school of their choice because of their race. But the school districts assert that given stubbornly segregated housing patterns, their enrollment process is the only way to achieve integrated learning environments in the spirit of the historic Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954.

Boston was once in the forefront of the nation’s efforts to desegregate. In 1965 the state legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act, requiring the state’s districts to devise ways to integrate their schools. In 1974, federal district judge Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston School Committee to implement the city’s busing program after he found that racial segregation in the schools was intentionally established.

In 1974 nearly 50 percent of Boston’s public school student population was white. Now less than 13 percent of the students are white.  With 87 percent of the student body minority, significant racial integration in classrooms throughout the system is no longer mathematically possible. As a consequence, the Boston School Department has focused on the challenge of improving the quality of all schools.

The Boston School Committee removed race from its enrollment plan in 1999, when a lawsuit similar to the current cases threatened racial balancing in the prestigious Boston Latin School. The Boston Latin headmaster, at that time, Michael Contompassis,  predicted that without the old admission strategy the school would resegregate.  His prediction was prophetic. 

As of last year, African American student enrollment at Boston Latin School had dropped 42 percent from the 1999 levels.  The number of Latino students was down 32 percent.  With 75 percent of Boston’s students either black or Latino, they constitute less than 16 percent of the Latin School student body.

Erica Frankenberg of The Civil Rights Project, a Harvard think-tank whose research supports desegregation efforts nationwide, says the real question today is how Boston students can be integrated with those in the relatively more white and affluent suburbs.

The 70s busing plan was heavily criticized for not including privileged suburban children where liberal busing advocates like Garrity lived.  But this could not be avoided.  The Milliken v. Bradley decision, also of 1974, prohibited the inclusion in desegregation plans of districts not responsible for the original segregation. This presents special obstacles for school districts like Boston’s, which do not extend to the surrounding counties.

Through the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a voluntary program established eight years before busing began in Boston, districts in 38 surrounding towns like Wellesley, Lexington, Brookline and Newton accept a certain number of Boston children in their schools each year.  The program has grown from 200 to more than 3300 students and boasts a 90 percent rate of graduates that go on to higher education.

“These kids [in the suburbs] have a completely different life,” stated METCO executive director Jean McGuire, explaining why inner-city Boston school children don’t receive as good an education as those in outlying suburban districts.

“Their teeth don’t hurt.  They get regular medical visits so they don’t suffer from diseases.  They have their own rooms.  They have parents who sit and work with them.  Of course they do better,” she says.  “And in [suburban] districts they spend 60 to 70 cents of every [tax] dollar on schools.  In Boston it’s only 25 cents, because so much money has to go to police and fire and other services.”

Frankenburg agrees, adding that suburban schools tend to attract better teachers, and that they provide networks that help graduating students get ahead. She also points out the benefits of integrated schools for white students, who learn how to work with minorities.

But METCO is limited by its state funding, which has changed very little in the last two decades, and by the increasingly limited space available in suburban schools.  In any case, the desegregation achieved by METCO has been only one method, and could never be a solution for all Boston students.

Both McGuire and Frankenberg fear that the state’s Racial Imbalance Act, to which METCO owes its existence, is threatened by the current cases in the Supreme Court.  The NAACP recently declared that a failure of the court to support the Seattle and Louisville districts would be disastrous to hundreds of districts around the country making voluntary efforts to integrate their schools in the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education.

Twenty-one of those districts are in Massachusetts. One is Lynn, whose 16-year-old “controlled choice” plan has resulted in schools that more or less mirror the city’s racial mix as a whole.  On October 20, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a U.S. District Court decision that had upheld the Lynn plan.

 All eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which earlier refused to hear an appeal of this case – seeming to indicate that Lynn’s brand of racial balancing would be upheld. Under the Lynn plan, every child received an assignment in schools of equal quality.

But the court has changed considerably since last year, with the departure of Justice O’Connor (whose vote was pivotal in cases dealing with desegregation and affirmative action) and the appointment of two new conservative justices by President Bush.  Defenders of the Seattle and Louisville districts say the current challenge is being made to take advantage of the supposedly more conservative court.

Yet Frankenberg, who herself was present in Washington to hear the opening arguments, feels there are reasons for desegregation advocates to hope. She says the debate on desegregation cases is beginning to change:

“There wasn’t any question about whether diversity is important or not.  The debate is only about whether this is a fair way to achieve it. … There was nothing but praise for Brown on both sides.”